“It started, I think, in grad school when one of my thesis advisors said that it’s better to spend five minutes on the phone than five weeks in the lab trying to get a solution to a problem,” said Ryntz. “So through networking, the greatest advantage is saving the time when you can reach out to others and ask them about a particular issue that you have, if they have potential solutions.”

Ryntz sees the future of the automobile industry as a “clean sheet of opportunities” with the development of autonomous vehicles that challenges the assumptions of current vehicles.